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Saturday, November 22, 2014

The doorbell rang at about 8:30 yesterday morning. From the side light windows I could see a man and woman standing at the front door. We were expecting them. Well, I should say we were expecting someone to come to install our new bedroom carpet. We opened the door and the man said, “Carpet”.
The two of them quickly came into the house and immediately headed for the bedroom. They knew the layout of the house, they said.
As they brushed passed me, the woman said, “There are four of us.”
“Two more out in the car,” she called over her shoulder.
The other two were a young woman and a young man. They looked to be in their early 20’s. They came in carrying what I assumed was carpet installation paraphernalia.
The woman stood outside the bedroom, looking into the room. She shook her head and said, “Wow!”Huh! I thought we had done a pretty good job of emptying out the bedroom. All that was left was the heaviest treadmill in the world, the biggest 1930’s depression era vanity (which includes the largest vanity mirror in the world), a huge matching 1930’s dresser (which includes the world’s second largest mirror) and a chifforobe. Oh, yeah and a queen size bed.
The first thing that struck me was how quickly each of them moved. Their pace could easily be described as running.
There was a lot of this running going on. Runnning in and out, bringing stuff in from the truck. Running to fetch this tool or that.
After about an hour, with the exception of the treadmill, and the bed, they had moved the rest of the furniture into the bathroom. The bathroom, which is less than half the size of the bedroom. I don’t know how they did it, but they did.The next thing they did was rearrange our living room to make room for the bed. Then, after taking the bed apart, they moved it into the living room. They laid the box spring, mattress and frame up against one the living room sofas.
With Rico on my lap, I sat watching from the other living room sofa. It turned out to be the best seat in the house to observe what would turn out to be an interesting, to say the least, six hour production.
The yelling started almost immediately. At first I thought that perhaps he had a hearing problem and that’s why he talked loudly. But then, as I started to tune into what he was saying, I realized that he was indeed yelling.
Phrases like, “What’s wrong with you?”
“How many times have I told you to do it this way!”
The man was tall and lanky. His gait was quick but tilted. His worn and weathered appearance gave the impression of an older man. I realized later that thirty-five years of kicking down carpet had taken its toll.
During a brief lull in the activity, I had an opportunity to start a conversation with the woman.
“Is this a family affair?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said.
She was a pretty woman, with bouncy curls and a pleasant smile.
He was her husband, the young woman was her daughter, and the young man was their nephew.
She told me that the regular crew wasn’t available that day, so the boss sent them to do this job.
“Normally, they don’t send “him” out very often anymore to do these installs,” she said.
“He’s too much of a perfectionist.”
According to his wife, he constantly complained that he couldn’t get good help anymore.
I soon found out why.
She then told me that as the day goes on, he will probably get more testy.
I couldn’t imagine how much more testy he could get.
She was right though, as the day worn on, the yelling got louder and quite frankly more abusive.
When he would call for a certain tool, all three of his “helpers” would literally jump and run.
A typical barrage went something like this:
“Look at what you just did!”
“How do you expect me to get over there, when you put that in the way?”
“You’ve been doing this for three years and you can’t remember what I told you!”
This behavior lasted throughout the whole day. A six hour onslaught of nasty, demanding, venomous attacks.
I started to feel that maybe I was being filmed and would later find out that I was the victim of a cruel prank, or the subject of a Candid Camera episode. Perhaps, I thought, John Quinones would come walking through the door and ask “What would you do?”
Confrontations make me anxious.
Even though they might not recognize what effect this man’s assaults may have on them, I could tell by the behaviors of the woman, her daughter and nephew, it most certainly did.
They finished up at around 2:00. The last thing they had to do was re-hang the closet and bathroom doors that they had taken off.
This was the grand finale!
Nasty man: “Okay, let’s go. Where are the doors?”
Wife: “We put them out in the sunroom?”
NM: “You did WHAT?” “Who told you to do that?” “Did you ask me?” “You never put doors out in the cold!” “Next time, you ask me!”
As they left I looked closely at each of them.
The nephew and daughter walked by, with their heads down and did not make eye contact.
The wife cheerfully waved.
Surprisingly, even though he didn’t look at us directly, he wished us “Happy Holidays” and told us to “Have a good afternoon.”
Purely, by force of habit, I said, “And you do the same.”
Needless to say I was not happy about this man coming into my house and behaving the way that he did. The carpet seems to be installed properly, so I have no complaints about that.
But they were not very neat and left quite a mess.
However, I don’t think I will mention my displeasure to the owner of the flooring business. I wouldn’t want Mr. Nasty to take it out on his “helpers.”

Monday, November 17, 2014

Four of them arrived at 8:30 on Wednesday morning. Within minutes the house was filled with sounds of demolition. Joined in concert with the snap crackle of ripping wood was the bang, bang of swinging mallets prodding the old floor to just let go.
Listening to this, as I sat with my knitting in one of the four kitchen chairs, which, by the way, were now in our bedroom, I wondered how any sort of order could be restored by what seemed to me to be sheer and utter chaos.

Within in a surprisingly short amount of time, though, the old floor was up

out the door.

By the end of the day three quarters of the new floor had been installed.

Old Floor / New Floor

The four men who were doing the job were young, probably in their 20’s. The one who answered to “the boss” spoke English, but with a definite accent. I tried to identify the language that he was communicating in to the others. “Portuguese,” he answered when we asked. He told us that they were from Brazil.
I must say they worked hard, only stopping once for a short lunch break.
They came back the next day and were completely finished by 3:00.

I love our new floor.

Now onto the next project. We are getting new carpet installed in our bedroom. We are also getting the bedroom and master bath painted.
Today I spent the day emptying out our closets.

The plastic bins hold all of my yarn stash. Sinful!

I can’t believe that all of this fit in my closet. Ross and Rico can’t believe it either.
I hope this goes as smoothly as the floor did.

Monday, November 10, 2014

We have been getting ready for our floor replacement . The installers will move all of the furniture but they requested that we remove everything out of cabinets and off of shelves. And we have a lot of stuff.
Since the floor is being replaced throughout most of the house, the challenge has been where to store the stuff for the next few days. So, some of it went into the sun room, some into the spare bedroom and the rest is in the garage.
However, we did manage to accomplish a mini purge.
It’s interesting, you know, one dilemma we were faced with was what to do with old used books. I suggested that we put them into the recycle bin. But, then we found out that the local hospital second hand shop accepts all and any books. I guess plenty of folks still like to read the old fashioned way.
Today, Ross dropped off five shopping bags full of hard and soft cover novels, cook and diet books, how to’s, and what not to’s. There was a group of vol.’s 1, 2 & 3 Harry Potter’s, a series of Ed McBane 87th precinct detective mysteries and three big fat Ken Follett volumes.
Since my preference is to listen to downloadable audible books and Ross uses his Kindle, I suspect our book shelves will mostly now be used to hold what’s left of my pig collection, (don’t ask) photographs and a few other odds and ends.
Oh yeah, I came across these whacha-ma-call-its.

Looks like somebody around here was a big Willie Nelson Fan

The installers dropped off over sixty boxes of flooring today. We were told that that the wood has to get acclimated to our house before the install. I have to admit I was skeptical of this advice. I googled it and found this info:

"Acclimating hardwoods is
the process of matching the wood’s humidity and temperature to the ambient
humidity and temperature of your home. Because wood expands and contracts with
changes in temperature and moisture, it is important to “synchronize” the wood
with the normal living conditions in your house to the greatest extent
possible.

If you fail to properly
acclimate hardwoods, they will likely be mismatched to the house, which could
lead to two unfortunate consequences. If the wood is at a higher relative
humidity than the house, it will likely contract shortly after installation.
Even though you install the boards tightly against one another, gaps will
develop in the floor–as much as 3/32 of an inch per 3.25″ board. With
prefinished floors this is particularly troubling because you don’t have a
puttying and sanding step to allow you to fill the gaps.